I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

Gov. John Hickenlooper will create a task force to deal with the fallout from the state’s legalization of marijuana use, possession and sales.

‘Fallout.’ See, right there you can determine the tone that the Denver Post was encountering from the office of the Governor. Later on…

The task force is to include state officials, lawmakers, marijuana advocates and other “stakeholders” — likely a reference to law-enforcement, drug-treatment and community representatives.

If you’re familiar with bureaucracy’s little ways, you’re probably snickering at that right now. On the other hand, if you also favor legalizing pot then you’re probably swearing, instead. On the gripping hand, if you’re those two things and ALSO a partisan Republican hack* then you’ve gone right back to snickering.

I normally more or less ignore whatever shenanigans that specific members of the Online Left get up to – you run your plays against the rival team, not their cheerleaders – but this news from Chris Good is too entertaining to pass up.

[Hs launching a $500,000 (according to her estimate) coordinated campaign to support marijuana legalization on the whole and to influence a handful of propositions on ballots this November–California’s Prop. 19, which would allow counties to legalize and tax marijuana within certain guidelines plus medical marijuana initiatives in Colorado, Arizona, and South Dakota.

I understand what Jimmy is arguing here about how we can make something illegal, yet not enforce it without actually breaking the social compact (his example is speeding, which everybody who owns a car does). I just don’t agree with it when it comes to pot. There’s money in pot; if you have some, you can usually sell it. Which is my clumsy way of noting that there’s an economic factor when it comes to the War On Some Drugs; and when money comes into something, well, that complicates matters.

Personally, if it was up to me I’d make pot legal for over-21s and not-quite-literally crucify anybody caught selling or giving it to a kid, or using it while operating heavy machinery (explicitly including cars and military equipment). That’s more or less what we do with booze, and the Republic seems to have survived thus far under that particular regulatory regime. Of course, it’s not up to me: it’s up to Barack Obama and Joe ‘BFD’ Biden, so I guess that the potheads are more or less stuck for right now.

I refuse to believe that Matt Welch doesn’t already know all of what I’m about to write already.

Obama Loses His “Cool”With his glib dismissal of pot legalization, the president looks less like the man, and more like The Man.

When the generation of Americans under the age of 30 gets around to realizing that this handsome young president might not be nearly as cool as they’d hoped, it won’t be hard to affix a date on when the milk began to sour. It was March 26, 2009, when Barack Obama conducted a live town hall press conference featuring questions submitted online.

Near the beginning of this hip and mildly groundbreaking interaction, the president said this: “We took votes about which questions were gonna be asked.…Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, uh, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve, uh, the economy and job creation. And, uh (chuckles), uh, I don’t know what this says about the online audience (laughs), but I just want—I don’t want people to think that—this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. Uh, the answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

The live audience laughed and applauded. The kids online? Not so much.

To those in a hurry, let me summarize my response: If you’re surprised, you have no right to be.(more…)